It's probably safe to say that not every 34 year-old you meet will get as excited about dressing up as a zombie as Dr Matt Finch does.

Matt is the outgoing Reader in Residence for the Parkes Shire in western NSW, and has spent the last seven months revolutionising the way literature is taught to school kids in the region.

He's tall and broad with a scruffy light brown beard, piercing blue eyes and a rich English accent.

Matt's a natural storyteller who has you enthralled from the moment he opens his mouth, even if it's a story about life's most mundane chores.

While he grew up in rural England, Matt traded the rolling green hills for the hustle and bustle of London's crooked streets when he turned 18.

"I guess I'm somewhere between a city boy and a country boy; and I'm somewhere between a scholar and a storyteller," he says with a grin.

After extensive study of literature at university, Matt turned his hand to teaching English to asylum-seeking children.

"It gets to that point where you realise that you might not want to be a tweedy professor. Libraries are great, but you don't necessarily want to be sitting among the archives for the rest of your life; you want to get out there and do something.

"Suddenly I'd gone from this high-level, abstract research about refugees, to basically being a kindy teacher. It was really intense, but it was actually a really joyous challenge as well," he says.

"I'm like six-foot-one and there's all these little four and five year olds running around squealing, basically wanting to play. There are their parents, and then their pet dog, and then their teacher who is the number three person in the world and you have this huge emotional role and responsibility."

It was during this time that Matt developed his own ideas about how to teach kids what are perceived to be 'boring' topics in new and interesting ways.

"It's always been about breaking out of that box and showing that those dividing lines between scholarship and play and storytelling are not so important and they're not impassable borders," he says, gesturing passionately.

In mid-2013, Matt arrived in Parkes to take up the role of Reader in Residence.

It's a role that has seen him give kids in western NSW a chance to learn in new ways, from zombie apocalypse role plays, to comics festivals and a variety of other 'think outside the square' activities.

Tracie Mauro is the branch librarian at the Parkes Library and says Matt's time in the region has broadened a lot of people's perspective on how to teach.

"Working with Matt is always an unexpected experience," she says.

"He really gives things an edge. For library staff, working with Matt is an inspiration. I'll have staff say to me, 'I'm reading this book, but I'm trying to read it like how Matt would read it.'

"He's our 'champagne', but we need to make the bubbles sustainable."

With his time in the region coming to an end, Matt says the library has proven doing anything different can be achieved and successful.

"It doesn't have to require a tonne of funding, and that's the strength of working in the country; people are keen to get involved and give of their time and their passion," he says.

"Learning is about so much more than just passing exams.

"Life is so complicated and so hard, and if you just get this one moment, a little bubble where you get to play and you get to try out things that are a bit different, it's something you can't get through the cinema screen."

With a glint in his eye, Matt has one last message to share before he jets back to the UK.

"In life it's really important to get good qualifications, but we all know that there's so much more than that to being a well-rounded human being, having a good time, and making the most of your lot in life.

"Anything is possible. We've shown that if people get stuck in and share, you can do incredible things.